Ngugi wa Thiongo: brutal homecoming

Ngugi wa Thiongo knows what it's like to join the ranks of writers for whom home is the place where they'll throw you in jail if you show your face at the door. He spent over two decades in exile before moving back to Kenya recently. And he'd just returned to Kenya from Uganda, after delivering a lecture, when this happened:
"The gang had confronted Prof Ngugi as he showed a friend, Mr Kiragu Chege, out of the flat, rented for them by his publishers.
They burst in through the door as the professor and Mr Chege tried to fight them off, then made them lie down in different parts of the room before beginning their sustained attack.
Mr Chege was forced to lie beneath a sofa as the gang demanded money. He too was pistol whipped and injured on the face and hands.
Then the gang burst into the bedroom where his wife had been sleeping and, when Prof Ngugi heard her scream, he ran to her rescue but was beaten off and burned on the face with cigarettes."
He and his wife are expected to be released soon from hospital. News reports say that the attack on them wasn't politically motivated; cold comfort to the author, I'd imagine.